I want to tell you a story about what happened when an assistant DA, Sunny Eaton, tried to undo a decades-old conviction—one that her own office had prosecuted.

The conviction rested on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

An appeals court recently called SBS “junk science.”🧵 Russell Maze’s son, Alex, was a preemie with a raft of health problems.

When the baby arrived at the ER with internal bleeding and bruises, a doctor said that he’d been violently shaken. Alex later died.

In 2004, Russell was convicted of murder and sent to prison for life. 2/

Michael Morton, whose wrongful conviction I chronicled in my 2012 story "The Innocent Man," criticizes the new Showtime doc #Outcry for elevating several prosecutors--including one who sought to keep him in prison--while maligning an attorney who helped secure his freedom. 👇 1/x

https://twitter.com/MWMorton54/status/1279990912534425600

The documentary, which examines another troubled Texas case, "portrays D.A. Shawn Dick and his First Assistant, Lindsey Roberts, as 'truth seekers' who were supposedly inspired by my exoneration to bring real change to Williamson County," writes Morton." 2/x

I spent the better part of this year reporting on Paul Skalnik, who is likely one of the most prolific jailhouse informants in U.S. history.

This fall, days after a man he testified against was given an execution date in Florida, I went to see him.

Here’s what happened: Earlier this fall, I went to see Paul Skalnik in a nursing home in the East Texas town of Corsicana.

I found him alone in a drab, cluttered room.

The blinds were drawn and the television was on low.

In Florida, death row inmate James Dailey faces imminent execution. No physical or forensic evidence ties him to the crime. Prosecutors won a conviction with the help of a prolific conman-turned-jailhouse-snitch named Paul Skalnik. 1/ propublica.org/article/hes-a-… My investigation into Skalnik shows he lied about most everything, even his own name. He passed himself off as a decorated fighter pilot, a college football star, an airline executive, a Homeland Security agent, a real estate developer, a terminally ill cancer patient. 2/

BREAKING: Leading legal scholars file amicus brief in Joe Bryan's case, which is before Texas' highest criminal court. New scientific research on the reliability of blood pattern analysis "indisputably contradicts the evidence relied upon to convict him." sites.law.duke.edu/forensicsforum… This remarkable amicus brief originated at the Duke Center for Science and Justice, in a class taught by @brandonlgarrett and @NitaFarahany, and represents many, many hours of hard work by law students at @DukeLaw @DukeCSJ @DukeSci_Soc and pro bono counsel at @proskauer.